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nline as their last best hope one should not be surprised that ccp s visionary employees are seeking employment elsewhere posted by mord fiddle at 11 35 am 21 comments friday april 11 2014 the icarus agenda you have no power or desire to lay new eden low unbending hilmar called after him and even didst thou it is the stage pon which your own reputation struts turn off new eden s lights and you likewise stand in darkness where mittani would you go new eden having fallen fiddlers edge fever dream every now and then i m asked why i so dislike goonswarm clusterfuck coalition s cfc s dominant alliance the answer as i ve pointed out elsewhere is that i bear them no particular ill will indeed on any number of occasions i ve allowed that i have a peculiar fondness for goonswarm s rascally player base by which i mean it s core paleo goon membership and that the mittani is much as i d be if i let my darker self run off leash in fact regular readers of the edge readers will recall that i had long foretold the sort of hegemony currently enjoyed by the cfc as long ago as august of 2010 i predicted that the dominion sovereignty changes coupled with the then nascent supercapital economy would result in the eclipse of nullsec s pure pvp alliances by economic powers merchant princes of nullsec who would leverage huge cash inflows in order to dominate nullsec s warrior class i ve touched back on that theme over time as changes in game mechanics and the fortunes of war warranted for those of you jonesing for a wall o text overdose the full set of carebear posts can be found here rise of the carebears rise of the carebears part deux carebears ascendent carebears unbowed carebears triumphant carebear empires the ascent of cfc has proven my rise of the carebears hypothesis and disproved the carebear rot hypothesis supported by many detractors at the time i published the original rise posts in a very real way goonswarm s success has been my success they have validated a number of key theories of mine with regard to the impact of eve game mechanics on new eden s political economy at this point some of you might be scratching your heads and wondering why if goonswarm has demonstrated my bona fides as the hari seldon of new eden our relationship isn t much cozier how can i claim a degree of commonality with the mittani yet periodically thwap the suits on goonswarm s leadership team with the rhetorical rolled up newspaper as a long time champion of economic complexity in nullsec why aren t i a goonswarm apologist in short why aren t i on their side well that would be because i m on eve online s side at the end of the day the rise of economic power in nullsec was inevitable the ossifying influence of supercapital proliferation and consolidation on new eden has been called out for years by a broad cross section of the eve blogosphere put the two together and the current state of affairs in nullsec was a foregone conclusion although we told ccp in no uncertain terms what their designers should have seen coming ccp couldn t be bothered to listen they after all were the experts cue a cascade of quite foreseeable macro level outcomes to which ccp s design team apparently was willfully blind now it would be easy to get all mad at goonswarm s leadership for acquiring a choke hold on eve online however it s important to bear in mind that they are playing the game ccp provides and can do no more than ccp allows while it s true the mittani and goonswarm s leadership have a financial interest in maximizing their in game notoriety and their influence within ccp and eve online their gaming of the game is not new it is merely more efficient and while one might quibble over whether the advantage a well managed semi professional player enterprise has over a recreational player enterprise is fair the presence of the former in eve online is not new either eventually someone with a sufficient insight business acumen and time on their collective hands was going to take advantage of ccp s blinkered design approach if it wasn t goonswarm sucking all the oxygen out of new eden it would be somebody else heck it was almost the drone russian federation drf recall it was krutoj the destroyer who famously coined the phrase isk wins wars they ran the nullsec table back in the fall of 2011 and looked to be settling in for a long turn as the big bad of eve however the drf had several things working against them first of all they didn t have an organization structured to cohere in the absence of a common enemy secondly for the drf the in game utility of isk was limited to fighting wars military not economic hegemony was their game and isk and production inflows were a means to that end finally their ambitions ended at the borders of sovereign nullsec once nullsec was won the drf was rather at loose ends boredom set in old grudges surfaced and in the absence of external enemies they began to war among themselves the drf s fall from the technetium throne followed soon thereafter cfc is a different breed of organizational cat goonswarm s leadership has structured the cfc as a hierarchy of alliances rather than a confederation of nominal equals federations of equals sound good on paper but are very ineffective when it comes to collective action as the alliance atop the cfc hierarchy goonswarm s leadership team consults with coalition alliances but wields the decision hammer with a firm hand for most cfc alliances this is a good thing as thus far it returns positive results even alliances at the bottom of the cfc reward hierarchy are averse to risking their protected space and income in nullsec s new order against an uncertain future elsewhere in order to avoid the sort of internal frictions that consumed the drf in the absence of external enemies aggressive tendencies in the cfc must be directed outwards with a lock on the supercapital high ground and their movement toward massed capital ship fleets boredom is goonswarm s sole clear and present existential threat and the only preventative for that is new enemies and new conquests if those cannot be credibly manufactured in sovereign nullsec then they will have to be found in other parts of new eden goonswarm s leadership plays a broad spectrum game of eve online their approach to the game is an intersection of war markets media industry intrigue and metagame in this sense they access a much larger set of in game and out of game levers as they interact with the game than do their opponents and unlike their opponents in the sovereignty game goonswarm s ambitions both in terms of influence and income do not end at the borders of sovereign nullsec finally it s critical to recall that goonswarm s leadership in its present incarnation delights in playing eve online s players more than they do in playing eve online machiavellian metagame not digital capture the flag is their entertainment of choice for the mittani and his advisers winning nullsec in and of itself is not winning eve though it is an important prerequisite to so doing in this extended game paradigm hegemony in nullsec is merely one stage in a larger game that encompasses the whole of new eden victory is achieved to the degree that fun in eve online is a commodity goonswarm s leadership can dispense or withhold at their will this is not a bad thing really as i mentioned above goonswarm has embraced industrial and economic activities as components of a larger strategy forcing other in game entities to think and play in those terms as well that makes eve a more nuanced and interesting game as long as alternate play styles are viable and rewarding further from a narrative standpoint the larger goonswarm story arc with it s transition from goons as plucky upstarts taking on the big bad bob band of brothers to goons as eve online s version of firefly s alliance star wars empire or game of thrones house lannister is nothing if not compelling in a game that depends on player interaction to drive content the value of a good neigh invincible villain cannot be overstated however and you knew there would be a however i believe certain of the mittani and company s out of game activities to this end go profoundly against the interests of the larger eve player community thus bide a moment while i roll up a copy of this morning s post i n order to realize their in game agenda the mittani and company are pressing for changes to a number of foundational game mechanics while pitched primarily as attempts to fix the self inflicted paralysis in nullsec the desired effect is quite the opposite the primary immediate beneficiaries of the desired changes are the mittani and company they are intended to make holding sov nullsec even more profitable than it already is and allow nullsec s dominant entities to further lock in their control of that space further the proposed changes allow the lords of nullsec to gain a stranglehold on new eden s means of production and key inputs thereto the good news is that should ccp implement the desired changes any benefits that accrue to the lords of nullsec are likely to be short lived the bad news is that this would be because at least as described the desired changes would very likely bring about the wholesale collapse of new eden now before you set your collective hair on fire and start resorting to reductio ad tinfoilhattium consider these questions would eve online re engineered to be an mmorpg of by and for goonswarm be commercially viable what would be the consequences if the eve economy went into a tailspin so profound that ccp could not prevent its effective collapse to put it in classic science fiction terms the mittani and company are meddling with powers they do not understand i appreciate they think they do hubris is part of most tales that end in tragedy and if they were taking upon themselves the attendant risk i d say godspeed take out an insurance policy on them and let them have their icarus moment in this case however every resident of new eden has some skin in the unintended macro level outcomes looming in the digital wings posted by mord fiddle at 2 41 pm 8 comments wednesday march 26 2014 heroikos blog banter 54 heros welcome to the continuing monthly eve blog banters and our 54th edition for more details about what the blog banters are visit the blog banter page today s topic comes from diaries of a space noob blog and other sources quick post i was listening to a song and a question occurred to me where are the eve heroes against a dark background surely all we have are anti heroes a lot of mockery is aimed at any who attempt to be white knights eve is a dark place and yet pretty much all other mmo s try to place the player in the role of some form of hero boosting the ego and taking the player out of the humdrum 1 in 7 billion that is rl why have i fitted into eve did i never want to be that so iguess my question is do classic heroes exist in eve is such heroism even possible in eve how would you go about being one without opening yourself wide open to scams is the nature of the game so dark that heroes can t exist how do you deal with that irony what effect does this have on us and the psyche of new players coming in from other mmos is it something special that we don t have classic heroes or should we are our non classic heroes more genuine first things first virtue goodness codes of honor and the other generally accepted cultural markers of morality are not prerequisites to being a hero paragons of virtue can be heroes but they do not define heroism acts of heroism as not necessarily virtuous acts the relative morality of a person has very little to do with whether or not he or she is a hero consider achilles allowed his fellow achaeans to be routed and his best friend slaughtered because he was having a fit of pique over being denied a female prisoner he wished to enslave and rape thomas more burned heretics while dreaming of utopia galahad was a suicide his father lancelot was an adulterer and a traitor to his king charlemagne light of the early middle ages ordered the slaughter of 4 500 unarmed saxons and enacted laws sentencing to death germanic non christians who refused to convert lil orphan annie was watched over by two deadly au pairs the assassins punjab and asp plucky optimism is an easier world view to cultivate when a couple of morally unconstrained killing machines have one s back deception was wily odysseus stock in trade and he shared calypso s bed for years before finally returning to ithaca after two decades of war piracy and nymph shagging there he murdered from ambush the suitors gathered to court penelope his presumed widow forget about the distinction between anti heroes and heroes anti heroes are heroes period the only reason the term anti hero exists at all is that the various boards of censors during the twentieth century such as the mppc the cptb and the cca had so undermined and bound the core concept of heroism to a narrow moral code that such characters utility as a compelling narrative force was severely compromised an entirely new word was needed to reintroduce the morally ambiguous heroic figure back into popular culture so jettison any lingering notions of lawful good and the rest of the dungeons dragons moral spectrum from your thinking get the trademarked disney heroes out of your head prince charming never got half the ass kicking he deserved traditionally a hero is a protector or defender whose deeds are larger than life i e far beyond what we would reasonably expect of ourselves or others given a similar situation the hero usually battles against what would seem to be impossible odds and somehow manages through strength skill sacrifice or sheer stubbornness to beat them a hero may be a cultural archetype but it is often a hero s distance from the archetype that makes his or her story compelling finally never forget that one group s hero is another group s villain and yes that means heroism is subject to moral relativism ajax and achilles were heroes to the achaeans but little more than the worst of a grubby mob of thieves and murderers to the trojans crazy horse was a hero to the sioux but somewhat less popular among the troopers of the us 7th cavalry regiment and i m sure there are imperial storm troopers who collect sith lord trading cards hang darth vader posters in their barracks and have exceedingly unpleasant things to say about intergalactic terrorists like luke obi wan and yoda a number of writers in answering this blog banter have stated that there are no heroes in eve eve online they reason is far too cynical and jaded for heroes piffle say i the hero s natural place is among the jaded and the cynical it is fallow ground for heroes precisely because it is when we need them most and when they arrive most unlooked for and unrecognized my own list of eve heroes is a long one that goes back to my earliest years in game some would surprise you many of them as is true of most real life he...